Induction Class of 2026

Class of 1970

Some people leave Finneytown and take it with them everywhere they go. Steve Immelt is one of them.

At Finneytown, Steve was captain of the football team, president of Student Council, class historian, and a delegate to Buckeye Boys State. His senior year the Wildcats won the league championship, and more than fifty years later he still points to that team as the standard for how a great team operates. He remembers beating Lincoln Heights in the pouring rain as pure joy.

After Finneytown came a history degree from Yale and a law degree from Maryland, then a federal clerkship and years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. He joined Hogan Lovells, became a partner, and eventually served as CEO of what is now one of the largest law firms in the world. The Financial Times named him one of the 20 most influential law firm leaders of the past two decades. He has taught at Howard University School of Law, served on boards from the Nature Conservancy to Episcopal Social Ministries, and done pro bono work on behalf of Afghan refugees.

Ask Steve what Finneytown gave him and he doesn't name a title. He names values. Respect for others. Intellectual curiosity. Openness to ideas. The worth of a community.

Class of 1975

Mary Lynne Dittmar arrived at Finneytown High School in 1971 as a shy kid. She had already been through multiple surgeries for a genetic condition that wouldn't be correctly diagnosed for another twenty years, and she had to work hard just to connect with people. What she found at Finneytown were teachers who saw her anyway.

She names them all these years later. John Watts, who fed her love of the natural world. Priscilla Petty, who pushed her writing and offered her something steadier than criticism. Bill Swartzel and Tad Lasonczyk, who taught her music and how to listen as part of a team. Phillip Scarbrough, who showed her that history is about people rather than dates. Don Gruber, one of the first true mentors of her life.

The interests she carried out of that building were science, writing, music, and the night sky. They became a career that reached orbit. After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Dittmar led simulation and virtual reality work at Boeing before managing International Space Station operations and flight training. She founded her own aerospace consultancy in 2004, then built the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration into a 65-company force advising NASA, Congress, and the White House. She sat on the National Space Council's Users' Advisory Group. Most recently she helped shape national policy for a sustainable economy in low-Earth orbit as an executive at Axiom Space. Five Congressional testimonies. Thirty-one publications. A NASA Silver Snoopy.

She still signs off the same way she always has: I'm honored to say I'm a FHS graduate. Go Wildcats!

Class of 1991

Darryn Chenault has spent his whole life coming back to Finneytown.

He left as a four-year varsity baseball player and a three-year varsity football captain, first-team All-CHL and All-City in both sports, and a member of the only Finneytown football team ever to beat Wyoming. He credits Mrs. Kopke for making him come in early to finish his work. He still wakes up early thirty-five years later.

His career in public safety now spans more than 25 years. He earned the American Legion's Ohio Law Enforcement Officer of the Year award and was named national runner-up, and today he serves as Community Engagement Officer for University of Cincinnati Public Safety. He has coached football for over three decades, including five years as Finneytown's head varsity coach from 2009 to 2013. He co-founded S3C, a nonprofit that has supported families battling cancer and awarded scholarships for eighteen years, along with Driven to Win, a leadership program for young people.

In the middle of all of it he faced kidney failure and received a transplant from his nephew, Arryn. He'll tell you it clarified everything. When you've been blessed, you have a responsibility to bless someone else.

Championships aren't given, he says. They're earned. He learned that here.

Fifty years ago this fall, a group of Wildcats won a state championship.

It came down to one November afternoon. Not two minutes in, keeper Greg Deutsch charged out to challenge a shot and the ball got past him. Fullback Karl Novak was already there, covering the goal behind him, and he cleared it off the line. Deutsch dove back into the pile to smother the loose ball. He laughed about it afterward and said he'd put his head on the other guy's shoe. That's the whole team in one sequence, inside the first two minutes of a state final.

Novak made four more saves that day. Deutsch made fourteen in the last high school game he ever played. Mike Stevens scored twice in four minutes, a mark still in the OHSAA record book. Getting there took Rick Payne scoring both goals to win the district and Tony Chellew's game-winner in the semistate.

Asked afterward what won it, Stevens didn't talk about his own goals. He credited the defense.

They played for Bob Muro, and every player who has filled out a Hall of Fame form so far has named him as the person who shaped them. The pipeline that fed that team went back to Tom Stevens, who started youth soccer in Finneytown in 1967. A championship is never really one season's work.

Consider what those boys became. A goalkeeper who was drafted professionally and then built a soccer company spanning six states, still running a keeper camp forty-five years on. A fullback who became a litigator taking on the tobacco and asbestos industries, and who has funded a scholarship for Finneytown soccer seniors for twenty-eight years. A freshman on that varsity who grew up to be chief actuary of one of Cincinnati's largest financial firms.

Same field. One November afternoon. Fifty years of showing up for each other since.